Michael C. Dorf, the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School, will present the Cutler Lecture titled "Frankenstein's Monster or Spandrel? The Vices and Virtues of Legal Retrofitting."

Professor Dorf's lecture will call attention to a widespread but under-appreciated phenomenon in the law: retrofitting. Common law doctrines, statutes, and constitutional provisions evolve or are enacted for one purpose but times change, and later generations adapt them for some quite different purpose. Sometimes the result is felicitous, but not always. Such adaptations can also become "Frankenstein's monsters," that is, laws that turn against those who created them.

Michael C. Dorf has written dozens of law review articles on constitutional law and related subjects. He is the co-author (with Laurence Tribe) of "On Reading the Constitution" (Harvard University Press, 1991), the co-author (with Trevor Morrison) of "The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Constitutional Law" (Oxford University Press, 2010), the editor of "Constitutional Law Stories" (Foundation Press 2004, second edition 2009), and the author of "No Litmus Test: Law Versus Politics in the 21st Century" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). Professor Dorf writes a bi-weekly column for Justia's free web magazine "Verdict" and posts several times per week on his blog, "Dorf on Law." [Excerpted from his on-line biography at {{http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/faculty/bio.cfm?id=333}}].

The Cutler Lecture series was established in 1927 by James Gould Cutler of Rochester, NY, to provide an annual lecture at William & Mary by "an outstanding authority on the Constitution of the United States." The original lectures were held from 1928 to 1944. After a period of dormancy, the Cutler lectures were revived in 1980-81 under the auspices of the Law School, with each lecture published in the "William and Mary Law Review."